Friday, November 04, 2011

A day at the shed

A few weekends ago my friend Sarah and I met up with a friend of hers, and we drove out of Chengdu to a place called Flower Town. We were dropped off by some flower/plant markets, and we walked a ways to a place called the Cowshed Country Club.

This wasn't some country club like near where I grew up. It is more like a little getaway place out in the country. It's a place to relax, drink tea, play mahjong, play cards, play ping pong, and/or eat BBQ. The weather was nice and warm, and when we arrived we were offered some cold noodles or tofu, along with some green tea. I had the noodles and Sarah had the tofu. There we met up with about a dozen or so of Sarah's co-workers and friends.

Some of us played a little ping pong, and Sarah barely beat me in a fun game... 22 to 20 (and I didn't lose on purpose!). After ping pong we walked around the area a little bit and then it was time for lunch. The BBQ here is what we would call kabobs in the west. We had a wide variety of good stuff... rabbit, pork, beef, chicken wing tips, spicy bread, etc... all put on sticks and grilled; along with some noodles, some assorted vegetables, some steamed bread, and some watermelon. It was a good and a lot of fun to eat!

After lunch Sarah and I found a nice little couch in a quiet spot that had a nice breeze, and we took a short nap sitting there. Then about 8 to 10 people came over and sat on the couches nearby and began to play cards. They were kind of noisy, so we decided to go walk back to the market area and see if we could find a taxi back to Chengdu.

We got lucky and found a taxi rather quickly, and went to Wanda Plaza where I bought some groceries. That evening I cooked spaghetti for Sarah. She seemed to like it very much. The whole day was very nice and I enjoyed it very much!